Economy

"I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States," Boehner said forcefully in a speech before the House voted, over boos presumably issued by Democratic lawmakers. "A lot of people in this town can never say yes."

His debt-limit bill narrowly passed by a 218-210 margin. Among his fellow Republicans, 17 voted against it; no Democrats voted in favor.

The mainstream media acts as if not raising the debt ceiling by next Tuesday will result in America defaulting. This is a crock. America chose to proceed on a path to default decades ago. We are just finally reaching our destination. Below are the choices we made as a people and a country to default on our obligations and eventually destroy our country:

For all our obsessing about it, the national debt is a singularly bad way of measuring the nation’s financial condition. It includes only a small portion of the nation’s total liabilities. And it’s focused on the past. An honest assessment of the country’s projected revenue and expenses over the next generation would show a reality different from the apocalyptic visions conjured by both Democrats and Republicans during the debt-ceiling debate. It would be much worse.

This rumbling has been coming from Capitol Hill for a while, which made us start asking questions about what was really going on with Standard and Poors. It felt like there’s a story-behind-the-story driving S&P’s actions in the debt ceiling debate, which appear inexplicable at face value and go way beyond what Moody’s or Fitch have done. And the more we looked at the timeline of events, the more we wondered how the intertwining dramas of a) S&P downgrade threats, b) the liability that the ratings agencies may have for their role in the 2008 financial meltdown, and c) the GOP’s attempts to insulate the ratings agencies from b) are all impacting each other.

Hours before a deadline Thursday, the commissioners agreed to delay the vote on a bankruptcy filing for seven more days, while they reviewed the new offer from the county’s creditors. The proposal would reduce the total amount owed and use state backing to bring down the county’s interest rate.

The new standards are seen by the Obama administration as critical to reducing oil consumption and cutting consumer expenses at the pump, and the White House made it clear to Detroit executives that the changes were coming and they needed to cooperate.

It is an extraordinary shift in the relationship between the companies and Washington. But a lot has happened in the last four years, notably the $80 billion federal bailout of General Motors, Chrysler and scores of their suppliers, which removed any itch for a politically charged battle from the carmakers.

“Some people these days are so unfamiliar with vegetables in their natural state, they don’t even know that a broccoli stalk is just as edible as the florets,” said Julia Wylie, an organic farmer in Watsonville, Calif. The produce she grows at Mariquita Farm is served at Bay Area restaurants like Delfina, Zuni Cafe and Chez Panisse.

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“I won’t keep you in suspense any more. Here’s my take: MOMENTUM IS BROKEN. A big, ol’ monkey wrench, courtesy of input arising from the change in inventory and Imports. And once momentum stumbles, then H2 growth becomes a wild card, right?”